I would never have understood Ethiopia if it hadn't been for the planes.
Let me explain. Ethiopia is just too big and too mountainous to get around easily. And I only had three weeks to see the country; which I don't think is enough. Given my time again, I'd spend a whole week in Gondar, a week in Axum and a week in Lalibela.... but anyway, that combined with the fact that Ethiopian has advantageous domestic fares if you have an Ethiopian Airlines international ticket meant that I flew a lot more than I usually would.
Looking down, I saw the mountains on the way to Gondar. High, wrinkled, rough mountains. Mountains in brown and fawn and yellow, dry already.
But I also saw tiny round compounds. I saw precarious terraces carved into the slopes. I saw fields dotted by bright yellow roundels of haystack.
On the plane to Dire Dawa, I saw an immense slab of desert cut by braids of dry rivercourse. I saw high mesas carved out by fast rivers with cliffs falling away on every side. And on top of nearly every mesa was a village, small houses and fields doing their best to ignore the fact that their world is flat, and that a hundred metres from your house the bottom drops out of it.
I have no idea how people get to these villages, though the fact that one of my scouts in the Simien mountains walked just in his flipflops might be indicative. (Another walked in wellies, and shot up mountain trails like a goat on acid.)
I would never have seen this so clearly by any other form of transport. Ethiopia looks dry and scrubby and deserted; but what's striking is its fertility, and the intensive use that Ethiopian farmers make of the land.
***
Get on a bus, and you see something quite different. If you can see anything at all - because you're probably sandwiched in between a young professional with a big black laptop bag and her hair in tight braids, and a family with two babies clambering all over everyone in the bus. (Though at least no one will be standing up. That's a relief.)
You see school students dressed in bright shirts - burgundy, neon green, yellow and pink - streaming along the road in their hundreds as they come out of school in the late afternoon. You see Ethiopia's future in their satchels and their smiles. You see ox carts and bajajes and minibuses, and the occasional landcruiser, and savant donkeys who know their way home and trot with firewood on their backs and no apparent master.
(You see a minibus with drips of blood all over one door. Someone says "one man killed.")
You see long ribbons of bright grey road. Chinese made road. Very good road, but where you can't drive fast, because of the ox carts, donkeys, schoolchildren, cows.
This Ethiopia is different. Though equally interesting.
***
I wish I'd been on the train. Not the glitzy Chinese-run train that runs from Addis to Djibouti, stopping only in (well, 11 km out of) Dire Dawa, but the little local train that runs from Dire Dawa to the Djibouti border, through the bush, stopping in every tiny village.
But that was a train I didn't have time to take. I'm sure I would have seen another aspect of the country.
Choosing your mode of travel isn't a simple choice, as Rome2Rio suggests. It's a complex choice; because even if you don't actually believe that "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive", to travel in a particular way will give you a particular appreciation of your destination. Choose carefully, then. Choose well.
Let me explain. Ethiopia is just too big and too mountainous to get around easily. And I only had three weeks to see the country; which I don't think is enough. Given my time again, I'd spend a whole week in Gondar, a week in Axum and a week in Lalibela.... but anyway, that combined with the fact that Ethiopian has advantageous domestic fares if you have an Ethiopian Airlines international ticket meant that I flew a lot more than I usually would.
Looking down, I saw the mountains on the way to Gondar. High, wrinkled, rough mountains. Mountains in brown and fawn and yellow, dry already.
But I also saw tiny round compounds. I saw precarious terraces carved into the slopes. I saw fields dotted by bright yellow roundels of haystack.
On the plane to Dire Dawa, I saw an immense slab of desert cut by braids of dry rivercourse. I saw high mesas carved out by fast rivers with cliffs falling away on every side. And on top of nearly every mesa was a village, small houses and fields doing their best to ignore the fact that their world is flat, and that a hundred metres from your house the bottom drops out of it.
I have no idea how people get to these villages, though the fact that one of my scouts in the Simien mountains walked just in his flipflops might be indicative. (Another walked in wellies, and shot up mountain trails like a goat on acid.)
I would never have seen this so clearly by any other form of transport. Ethiopia looks dry and scrubby and deserted; but what's striking is its fertility, and the intensive use that Ethiopian farmers make of the land.
***
Get on a bus, and you see something quite different. If you can see anything at all - because you're probably sandwiched in between a young professional with a big black laptop bag and her hair in tight braids, and a family with two babies clambering all over everyone in the bus. (Though at least no one will be standing up. That's a relief.)
You see school students dressed in bright shirts - burgundy, neon green, yellow and pink - streaming along the road in their hundreds as they come out of school in the late afternoon. You see Ethiopia's future in their satchels and their smiles. You see ox carts and bajajes and minibuses, and the occasional landcruiser, and savant donkeys who know their way home and trot with firewood on their backs and no apparent master.
(You see a minibus with drips of blood all over one door. Someone says "one man killed.")
You see long ribbons of bright grey road. Chinese made road. Very good road, but where you can't drive fast, because of the ox carts, donkeys, schoolchildren, cows.
This Ethiopia is different. Though equally interesting.
***
I wish I'd been on the train. Not the glitzy Chinese-run train that runs from Addis to Djibouti, stopping only in (well, 11 km out of) Dire Dawa, but the little local train that runs from Dire Dawa to the Djibouti border, through the bush, stopping in every tiny village.
But that was a train I didn't have time to take. I'm sure I would have seen another aspect of the country.
Choosing your mode of travel isn't a simple choice, as Rome2Rio suggests. It's a complex choice; because even if you don't actually believe that "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive", to travel in a particular way will give you a particular appreciation of your destination. Choose carefully, then. Choose well.
No comments:
Post a Comment